In 1964 Ruth was notified that she was eligible for another 5,000 deutsche marks due to her loss of education, although it is unclear if she ever received the funds.13 The correspondence between Ruth and the URO seems to have ended in 1965. This money surely helped Ruth financially, but it is doubtful that it ever brought her any sense of closure or justice concerning the gaping loss of her parents and her trauma as a refugee.
Chapter 25
In the spring of 1958, Ruth took Librarianship 220B, a course that required her to write a substantial bibliography. Writing bibliographies was a significant part of a librarian’s job at the time, especially for those who worked at university libraries. Not simply a list of books, these bibliographies were guides—organized by source format and often including substantial overviews—that addressed the scholarship on specific topics. They sometimes included summaries or short critiques of each item. They were often collaboratively written and published by library-related organizations. In the information era before the internet and online union catalogs like WorldCat, bibliographies and other reference works were the first stop for anyone performing serious research on a topic. It was a task that librarians with subject expertise and language skills took on with great seriousness; they were not simply offering unbiased lists of sources, but also critiquing them and guiding researchers to the best and most appropriate publications for their specific research purposes.
Ruth chose German Jews in the United States, and, more specifically, those who had immigrated since 1933, as the topic of her bibliography. Considering her own experience as a German Jew in the US and her concurrent restitution claim, she took advantage of this assignment to pursue a personal research interest. Her bibliography was intended to provide a survey of materials available for a future sociological study of the group, and she pointed out that no definitive work had yet been written on the topic. She defined this group of recent immigrants to include those who, like her, were born in Germany and not considered citizens of that country but were classified as German according to the US. She pointed out that this group did not have its own Library of Congress subject heading, foreshadowing the work she would take up twenty years later.
Ruth selected what she considered the best material, mostly in English, from the following genres and formats: general reference works, general newspapers, Jewish periodicals, scholarly journals, publications by special agencies, fiction books, monographs, dissertations, biographies, and autobiographies. She scoured the catalogs at the University of California Library and the Hillel Foundation Library at Berkeley for sources.1 She also contacted the American Jewish Historical Society, the United Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society Service (HIAS), the American Jewish Committee, and the Leo Baeck Institute. In total, the bibliography lists 292 sources, with a short comment or explanation by Ruth for each one. Along with other bibliographies written for this class over the years, it is still held in the Berkeley library. “A Selective Guide to Source Materials on German Jews in the U.S. from 1933 to the Present Time” reveals how Ruth channeled her past trauma and yearned to make sense of it through systematic, dogged research. She earned an A in Librarianship 220B.2
In the 1950s the faculty of Berkeley’s School of Librarianship decided to take an active stance concerning McCarthyism in general and, more specifically, censorship in California’s schools and public libraries. The witch hunt to root out Communists from both the federal government and Hollywood had also spread to librarianship, as many local libraries were accused of providing Communist books to the public. Professor Fred Mosher was the head of the California Library Association’s (CLA) Intellectual Freedom Committee when a woman named Anne Smart alerted the state legislature to what she believed to be Communist materials in the Marin County school libraries. A bill was proposed to ban subversive materials in school libraries, but the CLA successfully lobbied against its passage. After this incident, the CLA decided to fund a study of censorship in California libraries but backed off the project when alternative funding was secured from the Fund for the Republic. Because this organization had supported other efforts against McCarthyism, CLA members feared more backlash. Despite opposition from the board of regents, the School of Librarianship stepped up to sponsor the study with funding from the Fund for the Republic. 3
Marjorie Fiske, a professor in the Sociology Department, was tasked with managing the study. Along with a team of research assistants, she interviewed librarians across California about book challenges, pressure from the community and library boards, and their practices of book selection. The study uncovered the fact that while book challenges by the members of the community were relatively rare across the state, librarians were cautious about selecting books considered controversial or subversive, and when they did purchase these books for the library, they often kept them behind the reference desk or in offices. California librarians had been spooked by McCarthyism and cases of censorship in the news and, to protect themselves, had exercised what Fiske termed “preventative censorship.”4
On July 10–12, 1958, the School of Librarianship hosted a symposium titled “The Climate of Book Selection: Social Influences on School and Public Libraries.” Scholars outside the field of librarianship presented papers on censorship, and Fred Mosher gave an overview of the recent book challenges in California. Marjorie Fiske concluded by giving a summary of the findings of her report, which was to be published the next year. Librarians from across the country attended, weighing in on discussions after each paper. Mosher later explained his overall reasoning for advocating for both the study and the symposium: “I think that the idea was that library schools particularly, and library school students, ought to be made thoroughly aware of the problems of intellectual freedom and approved methods of combatting censorship of books, and also they should push to get policies so they would have backing from their board whenever a censorship incident occurred.”5
In Ruth’s collection at the University of Washington, there is a ticket stub for the symposium. She probably sat in the audience, mulling over how the blatant censorship she had lived under as a teenager was alive and well in California, just in a more subtle and polite form. Ruth may have also bee
n aware of the widespread segregation of public libraries in the South and no doubt knew that the state of America’s libraries was not what it ideally could be. She would graduate from the library school just a few weeks later and had already applied for several jobs. She hoped that whatever job she landed would finally give her the chance to live up to the ideals that she had been cultivating, not just in library school but also throughout her whole life. She was now fully prepared to claim a calling and a professional title that would give her a new lease on life: librarian.
Chaja and Mendel Rappaport, ca. 1922.
Courtesy of Guy Rosner
Ruth Rappaport, 1929.
Courtesy of Guy Rosner
Chaja, Ruth, and Mendel Rappaport, undated.
Courtesy of Guy Rosner
Ruth Rappaport, undated.
Courtesy of Guy Rosner
Unknown man, Ruth, Chaja, and Mendel Rappaport at a café in Leipzig, undated.
Courtesy of Ben Zuras
Photograph of Clara and Mirjam Rappaport at the Monument to the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig, 1929.
Courtesy of Guy Rosner
Chaja and Mirjam Rappaport on Salomonstrasse in Leipzig, July 17, 1937.
Photograph number 51879, Ruth Rappaport collection, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Ruth Rappaport in the courtyard of her apartment building, November 8, 1938.
Photograph number 51874, Ruth Rappaport collection, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Photograph of Ruth Rappaport watching Ursi Herzog climb on her carriage in Zurich, February 5, 1939.
Photograph number 51871, Ruth Rappaport collection, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Ruth Rappaport at the Herzogs’ home in Zurich, February 4, 1939.
Photograph number 51872, Ruth Rappaport collection, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum